Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes

The Treasury just told markets not to trust their own eyes. Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, and Liam Nelson put four stories on the clock. They break down the US Treasury more than doubling its bond buyback program, from a $2 billion cap to a $4 billion floor, in an attempt to cap bond yields, only for 30-year yields to erase the intervention and climb back toward multi-decade highs within 24 hours, right after Treasury Secretary Bessent said the yields "do not reflect the underlying fundamentals." OpenAI has reportedly paused a round of frontier-model post-training over safety concerns, just as Alibaba's open-source Qwen model closes the gap on the frontier labs while running on a laptop. Moderna and Merck's personalized cancer vaccine cleared a major late-stage trial milestone, sending both stocks sharply higher. And New York City is weighing grants for local grocers to help them compete with Mayor Mamdani's government-run grocery stores. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?

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🎙️ About The Show

Signal vs Noise: a twice weekly show unpacking the five biggest stories across capital markets, technology, and people, with five minutes on the clock for each.

🧠 Chapters

00:53 - Topic 1 - Treasury Doubles the Bond Buyback as Yields Hit Multi-Decade Highs

06:28 - Topic 2 - OpenAI Pauses Training as Qwen Goes Toe to Toe With the Frontier

10:55 - Topic 3 - Moderna and Merck's Cancer Vaccine Breakthrough

16:40 - Topic 4 - Mamdani's Government-Run Grocery Stores

23:42 - Lightning Round and Parting Thoughts

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